


As Sunlight Drinketh Dew

by thepointoftheneedle



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Editor Betty Cooper, F/M, Fluff, Getting Back Together, Smut, Writer Jughead Jones, an OC dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24456886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepointoftheneedle/pseuds/thepointoftheneedle
Summary: Betty and Jughead reconnect ten years after a hiatus, a caesura. Jug has lost his way a little in LA, Betty is "fine" in NYC.  She has a bathtub, what could possibly be missing in her life?  Can they fix what got broken along the way? (Of course they can, what kind of monster do you take me for?)
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 32
Kudos: 127
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees, Betty and Jughead





	As Sunlight Drinketh Dew

**Author's Note:**

> So there's a great deal of Tennyson in this one. Look he's a dead white man and all his women are pining ineffectual creatures- except Guinevere who is problematic in her own way. But maybe we can look at those poems now and think about how that image of womanhood might be screwing with us, getting in the way of us going after what we want... I mention Elaine and Guinevere and Launcelot and Bedivere from The Idylls of the King as well as The Lady of Shalott, In Memoriam, The Foresters and Mariana. I prefer to listen to Tennyson and you can find audio of all of these in a few seconds on youtube if you are curious. Idylls is WAY long though. This story ends with Betty quoting a poem called Fatima (still pining but sexy pining, throbbing, snigger) which was the inspiration for this story. So here is that one.
> 
> O Love, Love, Love! O withering might!  
> O sun, that from thy noonday height  
> Shudderest when I strain my sight,  
> Throbbing thro' all thy heat and light,  
> Lo, falling from my constant mind,  
> Lo, parch'd and wither'd, deaf and blind,  
> I whirl like leaves in roaring wind.
> 
> Last night I wasted hateful hours  
> Below the city's eastern towers:  
> I thirsted for the brooks, the showers:  
> I roll'd among the tender flowers:  
> I crush'd them on my breast, my mouth;  
> I look'd athwart the burning drouth  
> Of that long desert to the south.
> 
> Last night, when some one spoke his name,  
> From my swift blood that went and came  
> A thousand little shafts of flame  
> Were shiver'd in my narrow frame.  
> O Love, O fire! once he drew  
> With one long kiss my whole soul thro'  
> My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
> 
> Before he mounts the hill, I know  
> He cometh quickly: from below  
> Sweet gales, as from deep gardens, blow  
> Before him, striking on my brow.  
> In my dry brain my spirit soon,  
> Down-deepening from swoon to swoon,  
> Faints like a daled morning moon.
> 
> The wind sounds like a silver wire,  
> And from beyond the noon a fire  
> Is pour'd upon the hills, and nigher  
> The skies stoop down in their desire;  
> And, isled in sudden seas of light,  
> My heart, pierced thro' with fierce delight,  
> Bursts into blossom in his sight.
> 
> My whole soul waiting silently,  
> All naked in a sultry sky,  
> Droops blinded with his shining eye:  
> I will possess him or will die.  
> I will grow round him in his place,  
> Grow, live, die looking on his face,  
> Die, dying clasp'd in his embrace.

Jug finished up the last meeting with a sigh of relief. It was almost impossible to coax writers to kill their darlings but it had to be done if the show was going to have a coherent narrative through-line. Sometimes someone’s favourite line of dialogue or piece of character development just had to be sacrificed for the greater good. And if he couldn’t persuade the writers’ room he nixed it himself with a swipe of a red pen and the phrase he knew they muttered behind his back, “Put it in your novel.” Their jibes never bothered him; none of them were going to pull a switchblade so their discontent barely registered.

He had three weeks off during the hiatus and he needed them. He felt burned out and bored. The show had stellar ratings, he had a feature film in development, a slew of articles designated him a Hollywood enfant terrible, a show runner at twenty nine. There was more money than his simple tastes could exhaust but it wasn’t the writing career he’d envisioned. He was one of those writers with one successful, maybe even important, novel who never quite repeats the trick. He wasn’t in bad company though, Salinger debatably, Emily Bronte for sure, could he still include Harper Lee? He got into the car and pulled out of the studio lot. It was only a few miles to his place in the Hollywood Hills but LA traffic was a bitch and it could take an hour some days. He mourned the loss of his motorcycle but the studio insisted that he not use it while he was under contract. If the show runner and lead writer reduced himself to a smear on the hot tarmac they’d be out of pocket and no one would insure him adequately after his last late night, sleep deprived crash.

Still, almost a month to recharge, no one watching. Who’d know if he broke the rules a little? He could take the bike out into the desert, get free for a while. Maybe he’d even write for himself, not for work, not for publication. Writing for fun was a luxury that he seldom had time to enjoy and he missed it. He got home just as the sun was beginning to sink behind the treeline at the back of the property. The evening air was heavy with LA’s signature perfume, jasmine and gasoline. There were compensations for the insane schedule. He sat out by the pool, with a cold beer and a joint to wait on some teenager who was bringing him quesaritos in “like 20 dude.” It was still hot and his place was far enough out that he could hear cicadas as well as the constant drone of traffic and the occasional squall of sirens in the distance. It was a good life that he’d made here. He knew what his dad would say “It don’t mean nothing boy if you got no-one to share it with. Learn from my mistakes. Family… love. That’s what it’s about.” He disagreed. The lessons he’d learned from FP were that he’d better be able to rely on himself because he was all he had in the final reckoning, that it was better to be alone than with someone who made you crazy and to never, never drink spirits.

The next day he slept late and then performed a pretentious ritual to make good pour over coffee which he took black with a sliver of lemon peel. He sat at the kitchen island to drink it while idly browsing news sites on his laptop. Politics made him crazy in five minutes flat so he followed his own rule. Whenever he felt compelled to call the commander in chief an “absolute fucker” he donated $50 to a domestic abuse charity or migrant relief or an LA food bank. It served to limit his exposure to the news to a level compatible with mental health and to ameliorate some of the most egregious policy decisions taken in DC to a tiny degree. It wasn’t a lot. He guessed he should be writing polemical articles and satirical novels but somehow he’d been seduced by LA, lost some of that righteous anger that is hard to maintain when, after your morning coffee, you take a swim in your own backyard pool. He felt soft and weak and trivial sometimes these days, like he was losing the edge that had made his voice different.

After his swim he went back to the laptop. There were some online literary magazines that he tried to keep up with, maintaining some sort of connection with the art of writing rather than just its commercial application. As he clicked and scrolled he stumbled across a new site. “Eviscerate” was angry, some would say ranting. There were serialised graphic stories which were disturbing in both content and presentation, there was poetry that let him hear voices that usually went unrepresented in mainstream literary publications, there were stories that had a political fury that made him nostalgic for his early writing. He liked it a lot. He thought about sending them a story. Then he reconsidered. First, if he wrote something that expressed himself fully the studio would have opinions and there would be meetings and emails that he did not want to deal with. Secondly, whether he liked it or not, he was a big name. This tiny niche magazine would feel obliged to publish his click baiting work regardless of quality. Another rich white guy, storming into a space where he wasn’t needed and stealing the focus. He closed his laptop and headed out to the garage to check over the bike. The thought kept coming back to him though. It wouldn’t let him be. He even had an idea for a story, a short thriller, overtly political. Later that evening after his dinner had been delivered he sat and made a start on it.

___________________________

Betty was late again because the subway had been shut down while they cleared a body from the track. Everyone was mad about the delay when they should have been mad about why someone felt so desperate that they’d rather be made into hamburger by a train than continue with their life. Or why someone so mentally ill was wandering the subway alone and uncared for. But once the trains got moving they all squeezed on and stood blankly, their humanity destroyed by the boot stamping on their faces forever. She stared at her copy of Tennyson’s Collected Works. “Be near me when my light is low when the blood creeps, and the nerves prick and tingle; and the heart is sick, and all the wheels of Being slow.” She imagined the person who had died, the pain of having no-one to be near them. Who would be near her when her light was low? She shook herself out of her morbid revery as the train reached her station. She rushed into the office, shedding her jacket as she went. It was May but there was still a cool edge to the weather in the morning. New York took a while to warm up but next month they’d be sweltering in this space with its inadequate, ancient, rattling air system. If they were still operating next month. The overheads were huge and, as everyone had told her, advertisers didn’t want their products to appear in this avant-garde, aggressively political publication.

She flung herself into her chair and looked around the room. There was Val, working during the day on layout and web design for almost no pay, up all night playing gigs with her band, also for almost no pay. Kevin had come in early and was already on the phone, smoozing advertisers, downplaying the violence of the graphic novel serialisations. He had an audition later. She had to remember to tell him to break a leg but if he got the part who would line up ad revenue to keep them in business? She’d known it had been risky to leave a steady corporate publishing job but she couldn’t just watch anymore as the country went to shit around her. Maybe online cultural magazines with a political agenda weren’t exactly direct action but this was a thing she could do so she had to. You either have to be part of the solution, or you're going to be part of the problem, right? She remembered who’d told her that. And now he was part of the problem. She read his name in the trades that Kev brought back to their apartment, the big shot Hollywood writer who’d sold his soul. He’d taken the pieces of silver and left behind any dead wood that would have held him back. Even as she thought it she knew how unfair that was. It was her who’d asked for the break that summer before sophomore year, her who told him it hurt too much doing long distance. She’d imagined that what they had would always be there, that she could return to it and pick up in the future, like marking your place in a book with a train ticket or a restaurant check. You go back to it, open it, smile at the memory of the journey or the meal and resume the story exactly where you left off. She’d been so very young that she didn’t know that it’s not like that with people. The words on the page stay the same whether you’re reading or not but people change when you aren’t paying attention. He’d changed. When she expected to restart their story he’d gone and gotten a life without her. She had gambled big without knowing that was what she was doing, and she’d lost. 

Still, she had a good life. Not Hollywood good but happy and meaningful and worthwhile. The apartment in the Bronx was small but it had a washer drier and a bathtub instead of only a shower. Kev was a considerate and supportive roommate and she liked waking up to his fine tenor belting out show tunes as he started the coffee machine. She had good friends including Archie and Veronica as well as her college buddies and a raucous crowd from her time at Appleyard Publishing. She liked to run in Central Park, she had a book group that she looked forward to and she saw a therapist once a month just to keep a check on herself. It worked fine. It was fine. She was mistress of her own self and her own soul she thought, Tennyson expressing her thoughts again.

She opened her laptop and started in on the submission emails. There were a lot after the weekend and she was reading outlines and poems and stories for a couple of hours until one grabbed her complete attention. It was a mystery thriller, a political conspiracy that led to an action packed twisty denouement. It was gripping but had a serious, important message about the responsibility to guard the guardians. She would definitely find space for it. She looked for the writer’s name and contact details. The payment for writers was small enough but she’d still need to make the transfer or, if they wanted to be old school, draw up a check. There was nothing except the anonymous email address, a generic server, a string of letters and numbers. She clicked reply to let them know the good news and ask how they wanted their fee.

_______________________

A week into his break he was bored. He knew that wasn’t good for him. When he got bored he got reckless and no-one liked him reckless. He’d finished the story on Friday and submitted it anonymously via a burner email account. If they liked it and wanted it then he’d think of a pen name. He’d liked writing it. He hadn’t had to concern himself with what the network would think, how the ratings would go, whether he had offended advertisers. He wrote what pleased him. So on Monday he grabbed the laptop again, dragged an upright chair and a small table out to the lawn and began to play around with ideas for a new novel, intimidated by the ambition of the undertaking but excited for the first time in too long.

As he was typing his laptop pinged with an incoming email. He glanced at it and saw that it was from ‘Eviscerate.’ He clicked it open. A friendly email from a commissioning editor. He scanned down. They did want it. That was good. Maybe he was still a decent writer not just a pen for hire. He scrolled through terms and conditions that didn’t interest him. The fee wasn't worth the bother of claiming. He’d ask them to donate it somewhere, maybe to a struggling writer. Finally, at the bottom of the email, the name. He pushed back from the table as if he’d been stung. His heart was racing. He felt nauseous. He found himself walking about on the lawn, now leaning forward, hands on his thighs. Fucking Elizabeth Cooper. If he had been in any doubt at all there was even an electronic signature in her familiar looping cursive, Betty A. Cooper. 

What the fuck was perfect Betty Cooper doing publishing internet rage? He’d thought he knew exactly what she’d be doing. He had her filed in a neat pigeonhole which prevented him from ever having to think about her. And now he was thinking about her. The writing was over for the day. Never, never drink spirits he reminded himself. He stowed the laptop and went to the garage, uncovering the bike with a swoosh of the dust sheet. In ten minutes he was tearing out of the city, running away from that signature.

They’d been more than high school sweethearts. He’d been prepared to skip college and go with her to New Haven, get a job waiting tables or something so she could come home to him and tell him about her classes. But she insisted that he had to follow his dreams. She’d said their relationship wouldn’t work if he didn’t. So off to Iowa he went like an obedient dog. For a while it had been exciting, sexting, video calls that got pretty X rated. They talked every day and met up when they could afford the trip. Sometime after Christmas she said that the video sex was unsatisfying, she needed a warm body, her fingers just didn’t do it for her, so they didn’t do that anymore. He worried about it so on the way to see her he stopped into an adult shop and bought her a sex toy, nineteen fucking years old, embarrassed and nervous as hell. But he’d done it for her. She didn’t like it, she said it was him or nothing. She cried every time they hung up the phone. And then she didn’t cry and that was so much worse. Back at home that summer they fell on each other in desperation, trying to mould themselves into one being that could never be pulled apart but from the beginning there had been a clock counting down and they both knew it. They couldn’t be the same with each other knowing that their expiry date was approaching, it made them testy and irritable even when all he wanted was to be happy and enjoy her. Then on the day before he had to leave they'd been at the river, sitting on the bank, their feet in the water and she'd said the words that he had been desperate to prevent her from speaking. “It’s too hard… I love you… We’ll take a break… When we graduate… We can get back together. It’ll be OK.” But it hadn’t been OK. Not ever again.

He’d gone back to college in a fury, picked up an insane course load, took summer courses to avoid going back home the next summer and raced through his degree, finishing a year early, staying on for grad school. All that first year on the graduate writing program he’d waited to hear from her but there had been nothing. He wondered if he should call her but she was still on the East Coast and he was still in the midwest. Nothing was different. He would wait. She’d come when she was ready. Or she wouldn’t.

His professor, Rosemarie, was drafted in to rewrite a screenplay and she asked him to help because she loved his writing and she felt a little under the weather. He’d almost finished the novel that would earn his diploma so he agreed to come on board. They were good friends, he spent days with her husband out on their motorcycles returning to their place for tagliatelle carbonara which was the only thing Rosie knew how to cook. Then the two writers would tap away on keyboards all evening, arguing over motifs and dialogue, having a blast. They had a connection that Jug seldom found with people and Jug was a motherless kid. He loved her like a son. Rosemarie started to feel worse and worse. She was persuaded to see her doctor but she said she should have seen her much earlier because now there wasn’t anything to be done. 

He worked on their screenplay sitting by her bedside because she wanted to see it finished. He was typing furiously, trying to race to the end before she got to hers. He made it but only just. She was well enough to read the last act in her bed in the hospice. In the middle of the sickness and the screenplay he received his diploma but he barely noticed in the hurricane of grief and creativity. Rosie had spoken to the studio, she told them they should fly Jug out for rewrites and to make changes after the test screenings. She insisted that he have the sole writing credit. They were reluctant but even those hard nose film execs couldn’t tell the dying woman that they wouldn’t at least give her protégé a shot. Two weeks after her funeral he flew to LA and started work. It was a good fit; he was hardworking and tough. He could argue for his ideas but he’d do as he was told if he lost. They kept him on through filming for on the spot rewrites when an actor couldn’t pronounce a line or had some sort of issue with their character’s backstory. He was getting good money for a project he'd worked on with his dear friend and he felt like he was paying tribute to her with every page. He also had time to work on the final draft of the novel that had been on the back burner since before Rosemarie got really sick. He was writing all day, everyday, and most of the night too, in a studio apartment in the City of Angels, mixing with directors and movie stars. It was exciting to be surrounded by artists. His dad flew out and stayed for a week. He asked if he’d been in touch with Betty and he said no but that he was sure she knew how to find him. Archie and Veronica had his address. Of course now, instead of half a continent separating them it was the whole country. From sea to shining sea. But this was what she’d wanted, for him to be a writer, to be something for himself rather than simply her lover. Then, a few months later, Archie came for a visit, striding towards him in LAX looking nervous. “Look man, you’re bound to hear somehow. Betty got engaged.” So that was that.

Looking back now he thought that he hadn’t called her after graduation because he knew it would hurt too much. She had blown him off once. He couldn’t go through it again. It had been her choice to separate, she’d reach out to him if she wanted him. But she didn’t. He wondered what he would have done if she’d called him when Rosie was dying or when he was working on the film. Would he have dropped everything for her? Would he have abandoned his dying friend and their project to run back to Betty at her whim? He thought he would, but he would have been mad about it. Anyway it didn’t matter because she’d found someone she liked better, who she wanted more. He insisted Archie make him a promise. He was never to mention her again. He didn’t want to know that Veronica had been to her bachelorette, what date the wedding was, that she had had a baby, nothing. That would hurt too much. He’d been with other girls, of course he had. At college there had been a few that he had liked but he’d always been clear that it was a friends with benefits situation because he was in love with someone. That deal was done. In LA when he knew she was lost for good he saw women but he found everything so transactional. They always wanted something. Could he get them in front of a producer or a director. Could he write something for them? Would he introduce them to this actor or that singer? Sometimes he did but he hated the look that the celeb gave him when he presented some skinny, desperate girl to them. “Oh this is her getting paid right?” they were thinking. 

So now what? Did he email her and say “Hi, it’s Jug. I like your magazine.” It would look like he was stalking her, making some creepy attempt to contact her. What would Adam say about that? It was almost six years since Archie had told him about her and Adam, she probably had a couple of kids by now. She would have chosen a good guy he supposed, probably with some cash, maybe a Manhattan apartment or, more likely if she had babies, a place in the Hamptons or Scranton. He knew that she’d had a job in publishing because he’d seen her name on a website when his agent was hawking the novel around and he’d said “Not Appleyard, I know someone there that I don’t want to meet.” He supposed that made him a coward but he wasn’t cynical enough to be cordial with her. He could email from the burner account, say he’d changed his mind and withdraw the story but that seemed petty. What would he do with it? Or he could just let it go. They could publish it under a fake name, he could turn down the fee, she need never know it was him. Sometimes doing nothing was simply the smartest course. He rode the bike for three hours and got home feeling clearer and brighter. He replied to the email, choosing a name with a wry smile. Two scorned lovers from literature. He told her that he did not need payment and that she should send his check to a charity of her choice. He thanked her for her consideration and ended the email with his best wishes for the future. He read it through carefully to check for distinguishing features, of which there were none, and left it at that. 

He went back to the novel, disturbed at how much his female protagonist was coming to resemble a certain blonde with a taste for severe hairstyles. He’d have to change it if he ever got it to publication. 

_______________________________________

Betty didn’t understand why Jay Werther didn’t want to be paid for the story. It was a great story. But he said donate so she’d send the check to Border Crisis to help with migrant kids on the Mexican border. She was sad that it wasn’t more. She drafted an email back, thanking him for the story and saying ‘Eviscerate’ would be happy to receive more as long as they were in operation. She explained that they depended upon advertising revenue and that it was a tough market especially for a publication with a political agenda like theirs. She thought that maybe if he was a wealthy person who wrote as a hobby he might become a benefactor to them. She knew other wealthy people but she doubted that even Veronica would be able to extract money from Lodge Industries for their anti capitalist endeavour and it would be a bad look to go cap in hand to the fiancé that she had jilted two weeks before their wedding to ask him for cash. The saddest thing was that she thought that Adam would probably give it to her if she asked. He was a decent and honourable man who she’d treated appallingly. Her face flushed with shame to think about it.

She’d graduated from Yale and begun to look for work, expecting each day to hear from Jug. An email or a text maybe? Deep down she’d hoped that there would be a knock on the door and he’d be there, leaning against the door jam, sherpa jacket and dangling suspenders, that crooked smile and his hair in his eyes. He’d say “Alright Betts? What’s for dinner?” And then he’d live there with her in her little apartment, him hunched over his keyboard, her heading out to a publishing house where she’d be a vociferous cheerleader for his novel. But he didn’t come and she began to feel anxious. She’d been careful to keep Archie and Veronica out of their break up or caesura or whatever it was but now she called them, at home in Riverdale, and asked after him. V sounded surprised. “I thought you knew Betts. He graduated a year early. He’s on the graduate creative writing programme now. He finishes next summer.” Betty was relieved. He was finishing up, making quick progress, working his way back to her. V wanted to tell her more but Betty shushed her. She didn’t want to stalk him. She’d wait.

She found a fairly menial job at a publishing house but she figured it was only for a year. Then he’d come or he’d call and they could start their life. She met a guy. There had been men in college of course, she wasn’t a nun. The problem was that none of them were Jug. He was her first lover. They’d figured it out together with giggling, gasping encounters at his dad’s trailer, by the banks of the river, in her childhood bedroom while her parents were at work and they should have been at school. He knew as much about what she liked, what turned her on as she did. She knew his body like her own. She felt like they had assembled their sexuality together like flat pack furniture so they knew every detail of its construction. That meant he’d never be surprised by her, never encounter her as a woman to be discovered, uncovered, revealed over time. She hadn’t wanted to be the girl who’d only ever had sex with one guy in her life. When she slept with a college boy she found out what they liked and at the back of her mind lurked the thought “Will Jug like this?” Adam was different. She wanted him in a different way. He was solid and blonde and comfortable. He didn’t have all of those sharp, spiky edges that defined Jug who was all elbows and knees and sarcastic remarks. She didn’t constantly compare him to Jug as she had with her other lovers. But she was clear with him. She told him from the start that if she went out with him, if she went to bed with him, it wouldn’t mean that they could be anything long term. There was someone else and he would be coming back to her soon . Adam said that he would accept whatever she could give him because he was in love with her. She was fond of him and she found she liked nice dinners at expensive restaurants and fancy charity galas and she liked his unquestioning, unchallenging devotion. It was easy. The year passed and Jug had finished his course but he didn’t come. She felt like the Lady of Shalott, half sick of shadows waiting for the sight of the coal-black curls. Finally she could stand it no more so she asked Veronica again and learned that he had moved out to Hollywood. He was making a movie. The mirror crack’d. 

There were a few weeks of unwashed hair and sweatpants all weekend, of cereal for dinner or cold pizza at breakfast time. She thought about calling him up to say “What the hell Juggie?” She even dialled once but his old number had been reassigned and she got someone else’s voicemail. She could easily find his contact details but it seemed that he’d made his choice. He’d moved on without her. She had to make the best of the situation. She had a kind, handsome, wealthy boyfriend who loved and wanted her. The difficult, complicated, thrilling, funny, sexy man that she loved didn’t want her. He was pleasing himself so she would make Adam happy. Two out of the three of them was a decent result. Not everyone gets to be happy. That was the first hard lesson that adulthood taught her. And she had sent Jug away. It was her own fault. She couldn’t blame him. She focused on Adam, on being good to him, on being loving to him even though he never made her gasp with desire or laugh until her sides ached and she begged for mercy. He proposed and she accepted. What possible reason could a sensible woman have to turn him down? There was a dark part of her that hoped someone would tell Jug. She didn’t know if she wanted him to be hurt or if she wanted him to come get her like Benjamin in The Graduate, pleading and crying. Both she guessed. He didn’t come.

At her bachelorette party she sat talking with Veronica over rosé wine and canapés at a boutique hotel in Maine. She asked after Archie and V let slip that he’d seen Jug a couple of months earlier. “How’s he doing?” she asked, trying for casual.

“Great. He’s kind of a big deal. The novel has a publisher, the movie is in post production; he has the writer’s credit. There’s awards buzz apparently. Arch said he’s looking at buying a house.”

“Does he know? About this? The wedding?”

“Yes. Archie told him. Apparently he said he wishes you happy. He wouldn’t let Arch tell him where or when the wedding is. Betty, you aren’t hoping that he’ll charge in like Sir Launcelot are you? Adam’s great. You love Adam.”

That was when she broke down and confessed to V that she didn’t love Adam, hadn’t ever really loved Adam. V said she had two choices but knowing Betty she had no choice at all. “If you marry him you can try to be a good wife but he will never have anyone really love him. Doesn’t he deserve to be loved? Going through with it might not be the kindest thing.” She knew V was right and so she’d called it off, trying to be kind but hurting him in the worst way. She understood how it felt to find that the person you love doesn’t love you back. In fact he hadn’t found someone else to love him, not in six years. Sometimes she was his date to functions and they had a nice time and he’d ask if she was over “him” yet and she said that she thought she never would be. Sometimes they had sad, nostalgic sex and every time she told herself she would stop using him but then it happened again. She really couldn’t ask him to invest in her failing magazine.

She clicked send on the email to the writer with the name of a hopelessly unlucky romantic.

__________________________________

Her email put him into a tailspin. It sounded like the magazine was going to fold. He found that he wanted, more than anything else, for her to be happy. He could help her but he didn’t know if she would let him. She could be stubborn and infuriating. The magazine needed advertisers. If they serialised the new Forsythe Jones novel, it would be a publishing coup, there would be no shortage of ads. He was writing up a storm. He could delegate his show running duties until the winter hiatus and get it finished. She could print it monthly like a Dickens novel. He’d just need to keep a month or two ahead and clear it with his publishers. Currently they had no hope of a book so maybe one that had been serialised online first wouldn’t be such a bad prospect for them. After all there were plenty of readers who wanted the artefact not just the digital product. He thought they’d go for it. That just left her to convince.

He emailed. He told her he had a friend, a well known author who was looking to serialise his next book. Would she be interested? Her response was “How much?” He told her there would be no fee. She wanted to know the catch and the name of the writer. Clearly she suspected that it was someone who couldn’t get a publishing deal. He told her that the writer was Forsythe Jones who wanted to support cultural resources like her magazine and she replied instantly saying that there was no way he would let her publish him. They had a “difficult history.”

He replied saying that he thought that it wouldn’t matter but if she preferred they could keep her name out of it. He’d tell Jones about the magazine, get him to look at it, see if he liked the message. He knew exactly which angles to play with her. He said that, if the mission and intention of the magazine was as important as he thought it was, she shouldn’t allow any personal feelings to prevent it from reaching an audience. She didn’t reply which he knew meant that she was thinking it over.

He felt puzzled by his own actions. She was an ex, that was all. He supposed that a lot of people felt nostalgic or sentimental about their first love but they didn’t sneak around to try to make them a gift of six months of hard work. He could try to kid himself that this was an act of political resistance, his overdue “I am Spartacus,” moment but he knew it wasn’t true. It was her that he wanted to stand by as much as the cause. He kept reminding himself that she was married, that she hadn’t wanted him when they were college juniors, when they graduated, when she married the other guy and probably had his babies. She didn’t want him, period. “Have some fucking self respect, man.” He made a deal with himself. If she wanted the novel she would have it and it would be a kind of farewell gift to her memory. Then he would be done with that. He’d find a nice Californian girl and get married and have a couple of kids. He almost convinced himself.

She replied the following morning. She would like to take the novel but he had to tell Jones that she was involved in the magazine. He should be clear that the writer need have no personal contact with her, that she would assign a colleague to all necessary interaction if he preferred and he should say, if Jones agreed, “Thank you Juggie.” He had to fight down a sob when he read that. Clearly she was not keen to renew their acquaintance but her use of the childhood nickname that she had used when they were in the third grade, that she’d called him when they began to date, that she’d whispered into his neck the very first time he’d unskilfully pushed himself inside her, that was what nearly finished him. No-one called him that. He was still Jug to his dad, his sister, his childhood pals but no-one except her called him that. He left it a day before replying. 

He rode his bike down to see the head of the network in Malibu in an act of studied provocation. He told him that he needed to take some time to write; they could do it the easy way and give him six months unpaid leave or they could do it the hard way, he’d call a lawyer to fight his way out of his contract, accept the penalties and quit for good. Larry had a soft spot for Jug so he agreed, on the condition that he took a meeting with the pinch hitter who took over at least once a week. “I hope the book’s worth it,” he said as Jug got back on the bike. 

“It’s not really about the book Lar. I’m fucked if I know what it’s about really.”

“Well if you were fifteen or twenty years older I’d say it was a mid-life crisis and expect you to divorce your wife and marry an exotic dancer called Truffles. As it is, maybe you just need a period of readjustment, correct your course a little. Good luck with it anyway. Don’t forget you’ve got three years left on that contract and the only way you’re getting out of that is if you’re dead. Even then I might just have you stuffed and you can fulfil it from the beyond.”

The following evening he swiped right in the faint hope that a warm body would shoo Elizabeth Cooper out from her seemingly permanent residence in his head. While he waited for a girl called Summer in a bar he sent the email. Jones would write the book. He had asked him to say “Happy to help Betts. Trying to be part of the solution.” 

_______________________

It had been a tough week emotionally. Fortunately she had a session with her therapist on Thursday so she tried to just stand still in the thicket of feelings that was entangling her with thorns until then. She sat on the same armchair that she had been coming to for five years and her therapist asked how things had been with her.

“I’m in love with a guy who doesn’t love me. He’s just offered to do something fantastically generous for me for no reason that I can understand. It’s unbelievably kind and stupidly cruel and I don’t know how to negotiate it.”

Dr Burble looked at her. “Why do people do kind things for others? In your experience?”

Betty thought about her experience of kind acts. “Well either because they hope to get something or because they care about you, so love or commerce I guess.”

“Does the man have anything to gain from helping you? It’s still Jughead that we’re talking about I guess.” Betty nodded with a wry smile. 

“I’m Mariana of the moated grange aren’t I?”

“Betty we’ve talked about your literary references. You have to explain it otherwise it’s just deferring your emotions elsewhere.”

“It’s a poem by Tennyson. I’ve been reading a lot of Tennyson. He’s all about the pining, hopeless love affair. He was probably in love with a guy so there’s the love that dare not speak its name, to mix my writers, and then the guy up and died so he was even more unavailable. He writes all these poems where the woman sits hopelessly waiting for her love and wants to die, or does die because he rocks up and she looks at him, which I guess is Victorian-speak for wants to fuck him. Anyway Mariana is especially weak and nauseating. She sits in this house that’s falling down around her and just whines on and on about him. She keeps saying ‘He cometh not, I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!’” Betty adopted a languid and hopeless voice for her characterisation and laughed harshly at the end of it. “I’ve always thought that either she is seriously depressed or she needs to get off her ass and go get her man instead of waiting on him.”

“Are you depressed Betty?”

“No, I’m sad. I’m extremely pissed about a lot of things but no, not depressed.”

“So, why aren’t you taking your own advice then?” Dr Burble raised an eyebrow and Betty heard the steel trap shut. She was far too smart. 

“He doesn’t want me. If he’d wanted me he would have come. Why didn’t he come?”

“I can’t answer that. Who can?”

“I have to talk to him don’t I?” Dr Burble raised an eyebrow. It was more than that. “Are you saying I have to go out there? Go to LA?” 

“I try not to offer advice Betty. I try to let you tell yourself what you think you need.”

“I can’t call him up and ask him to explain my life to me on the phone. I have to look at him. So I have to go. Fuck it. I have to take a transcontinental flight to be told that a guy just wasn’t that into me so that I can stop being a wilting Victorian lady.”

“Apparently,” was all that Dr Burble had to say about that.

She stopped in a bar on the way home and ordered a vodka tonic. She wasn’t going to be able to do this completely sober. First she drafted an email to Jay. She asked if he thought Forsythe might be willing to meet with her. She could be in LA on Sunday. She took a swig of her drink and pressed send before she could chicken out. Then she called Veronica. Their conversation was punctuated by screams, thuds and yells but that was just the Lodge Andrews household. With Archie and two little boys V was lucky to get a minute of peace in the day. “Mommy’s on the telephone to Aunty Betty darling. Ask daddy. What, this minute? OK mi hijo, OK. Archie your son has to do a poop. Archie! Now or you’re shampooing this carpet. NOW. Sorry Betty, you’re going where? NO not in a minute. This damn second.”

“I’m going to fly to LA to see Jug.”

“Ohhhkay. Does that mean that I can say his name now and you aren’t going to hang up on me? I just need to be clear about the rules.”

“You can talk about him.”

“What’s brought this on? Hold on. FREDERICK if you dare do that I will come up there. Right. You should be. How dare you?”

“He’s writing something for Eviscerate. And I want to ask him why he stopped loving me. And I guess…I guess I want to see if I can get him back. So that’s why I’m calling, to find out if he’s seeing someone or …is he married V?”

“No. Not unless he’s eloped to Vegas without telling anyone. Wouldn’t be on brand for him though would it? I don’t think he’s seen anyone seriously since he went out West. From what Archie says I think he has the odd date, if you can call them that, but I always thought you were the love of his life.”

She took another sip of her drink. “He’s the love of mine. So it’s a quest. I’m going to try being Launcelot instead of the Lady of Shalott.”

“Call me Betty. I’ll be waiting in breathless anticipation. Oh my God, Frederick Pendleton Lodge Andrews! You wait until I get my hands on you. Betts I’m sorry. I have to discipline the naughtiest boy in the whole state of New York.”

She ended the call and finished her drink. As she paid her tab her phone pinged with an incoming email. It wasn’t from Jay. It was from Juggie. 

______________________________________________

There had been an awkward moment with Summer. She’d wanted to come back to his place which wasn’t how he normally rolled. He liked to be in control of when the encounter ended and how. Still she’d come back and he’d fixed her a drink. She’d already told him she’d seen the show. Then she asked if he’d take her onto set so she could meet the cast and he told her he’d call her an Uber. She was surprised, offended even. 

“Look Summer, you seem great and all, but this,” he gestured between them, “this isn’t a relationship. I thought that I’d been clear but that’s just not what’s happening here. There won’t be dates. I won’t promise to call you and then not call you because I won’t make that promise. You’re looking for more than I have to give you. I’m sorry I wasted your time. The Uber’s on my tab obviously.”

“Well you’re a douche. It’s a hookup. We both know it’s a hookup. But if I say its a hookup I look cheap. So we do this pretend thing where I say we’ll go out again and you agree and then we just…don’t.” 

“Well what say we just don’t right now?” He just couldn’t face pretending with this pretty, silly, shallow girl. There followed an agonising twenty minutes of silence while they waited for the car to come and she slammed the door on her way out. Not one of his greatest dating moments.

A couple of days passed. He wrote pretty much all the time he was awake. A few pals called but when he was in the thick of the writing he didn’t have the bandwidth for socialising. He rode the bike to clear his head, he ran a little because he’d noticed in the last year that his metabolism was no longer the miracle it had once been. 

He was writing when her email came in to his Werther account. She wanted to meet. She wanted to come to LA. She wanted to come in three days. He tried to think about what it meant. Did she want to talk about the book? Was it a business meeting? Was she going to turn up with contracts for him to sign? Was she bringing her fucking husband? But if she was asking to meet him maybe she was divorced. To his shame he understood he’d probably be fine with being the reserve pick. He realised he was shaking. He had a choice. He could say no and always wonder what she’d wanted. He could agree to meet and be brusque and efficient and businesslike. He could pull out his heart for her and ask her if she’d like to stomp on it. Again. And he knew which option he was going to take. Again.

He replied to her email from his personal account. He told her that he couldn’t think of anything he’d like more than to see her. If she let him know when she was getting in he’d meet her at LAX. He added his cell number. He sounded like a desperate kid because that’s what she made him feel like. Betty Cooper was coming to see him.

He had a couple of difficult days. He couldn’t focus on the writing but he couldn’t do anything else. He took the bike out but found he wanted to be at home. Back at home he wandered from room to room, not able to settle to anything. He couldn’t read, he was bored by everything in the pile by his bed. He couldn’t choose a movie to watch so he watched the first ten minutes of four before accepting that the problem wasn’t the movies, it was him. He worried about what to wear to meet her. He’d never worried about that in his life. It took him ten minutes to realise what an idiot he was being. He wondered if she’d booked a hotel. Or was she planning to stay with him? Surely she wasn’t planning on bringing the Mr and staying with him. That was a step too far. Wasn’t it?

Still, on Saturday, he laundered the sheets in one of the spare rooms. Then, feeling like a total fool, disgusted with himself, he went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought new sheets for his own bed. He went to the farmer’s market and bought fruit and veggies and to a patisserie that the female actors seemed to like and bought pastries. All the time he was trying to squash down the hope that kept surfacing in his stupid, tender, vulnerable heart. Eventually he went for a run and just let himself dream. She’d get off the plane, she’d have her hair loose, she’d run to him. She’d say “I love you Juggie. Let’s go to your place and eat pastries and make love but only if your sheets are new.” She’d be in his kitchen, making coffee and singing, wearing his t shirt and he’d come in and put his arms around her and she’d say that she was never going to leave again and then they’d turn into swans or flowers or some shit. Fuck he was such a dweeb.

In the middle of his run she texted. “Betty LAX Sunday 10.20 a.m. Delta 659 Looking forward to seeing you. X” He texted back “Cool. See you then, X” That X was going to prevent him from getting any sleep. How could a texted X reduce him to a quivering heap of fantasy and desire? She didn’t need to touch him or even speak to him. She could just send him two crossed lines and he nearly came in his pants. “Husband,” he kept repeating to himself, “She has a husband.”

________________________________

Betty was keeping calm. She would think in a calm way. This was a calm way to think. She was packing her suitcase to go to California to see Juggie. She would put in her underwear. Nope, couldn’t think about underwear. Fine. She would put in a pair of nice shoes in case they went for dinner. Like a date, going on a date and then he’d touch her knee at the table and run his hand up her thigh and then he’d be touching her and…oh fuck. “Kev, can you help me?”

Kevin was in her room in a second. “Problems?” he asked eagerly. 

“I can’t pack. I’m in such a state of anxiety that I can’t begin to think about what I might be wearing on Monday.”

“Or not wearing. Let’s see. What will look cutest on Jughead’s bedroom floor?”

“Kev, don’t! Honestly I’ve never been so nervous. Well not since…”

“Are you going to say not since you last had sex with Jughead Jones?”

“No, of course not. But the first time he made the trip to Yale. Thanksgiving weekend freshman year. I hadn’t seen him since September and I was pretty keyed up. I got a hotel room. I felt like a grown up. Oh Kev, you should have seen him. He was beautiful and sincere and he brought me these gorgeous daisies but they’d gotten a little battered and he blushed and I loved him so much.”

“Doesn’t sound like a lot has changed. Right, sit there, I’ll pick things out and you can say yeah or nay, right?”

After Kev had packed for her with such economy and skill that she had wondered why she had ever packed a suitcase herself in the last six years she went to bed and tried to sleep. She had an Uber to JFK booked for 4.30a.m. and she really wanted to step off the plane looking, if not like the girl he remembered, at least not like her grandmother. Her mind was whirling crazily and she despaired of calming it enough to even doze. His text had sounded genuine. He’d even responded to her X. She’d agonised about the X in her message for hours. Was it breezy and affectionate or crazy and obsessed? Eventually she decided that if a texted X freaked him out she’d better not go. It wasn’t the goddam eggplant emoji. Great, now she was unable to stop thinking about the eggplant in the room. 

She hadn’t really seen him, not even in pictures, for years. While she was at college she was careful not to haunt his social media. It was a break, she needed to disengage. Then in the long months of waiting after graduation she had succumbed and searched for him on the usual platforms. There was nothing. She knew he was an iconoclast so she hadn’t expected there to be instas of his LA wheatgrass shots but she’d thought there would at least be shots from movie sets and premieres. Nothing. Stalkerish she'd browsed the accounts of his famous colleagues but if he appeared at all it was an elbow at the corner of the frame, the coal black curls from behind. He was a hashtag not an at symbol. She was Elaine trying to read the story of Launcelot’s soul from the marks on his shield. 

She wondered how he’d look. She wondered if he ever looked at her social media accounts. Would he still want her? LA was a Mecca for beautiful available girls looking for a break. The girl who poured his coffee in the diner, the woman who cleaned his house, they’d all look like models. She was almost thirty, there was cellulite on her thighs that wouldn’t shift no matter what she did, she’d broken his heart once already. She stared at the ceiling feeling like Sir Bedivere, would she have the courage to do what had to her done or would she lose her courage and fail? “The old order changeth, yielding place to new” she thought. Whatever happened something would be different tomorrow and she would adapt and survive. Fucking Tennyson in her head all the time.

By the time she took her seat on the flight she was exhausted and resigned. The die was cast already. All that remained was to look down and see what had been thrown. She rolled up her jacket, placed it against the window as a pillow and slept.

_______________________________

He left home much too early. He was in the arrivals area by nine thirty. He drank a bad coffee and then he drank another and couldn’t tell if he was mad about the quality or just jacked up on caffeine. So he drank another one. He saw someone reading his book. Normally that gave him a thrill but today he just felt embarrassed. He was embarrassed by the stupid goddamn daisies he was clutching. Was he planning to take her to prom? He still didn’t know what to expect from her. Was she travelling for business or pleasure? Finally her flight was announced and he almost bolted. His heart felt too big for his chest, his clothes were all wrong, he was all wrong. He was itchy in his own skin, he wanted to run screaming across the arrivals hall and, at the same time, lie down under the uncomfortable metal seats and have everyone ignore him. The passengers started to file through the barriers. He stared at them and hated everyone of them for not being her. Maybe she’d changed her mind. 

Oh fuck. She hadn’t changed her mind. She was here. Her hair loose around her shoulders, a light skirt and blouse, no business suit or briefcase of papers. So beautiful. He was paralysed. Then she saw him and grinned and he grinned and somehow she was in his arms, daisies all over the airport floor. He went to kiss her cheek but she wasn’t having that and turned her head and his mouth was on hers. Fucking Betty Cooper, he was kissing Betty Cooper. She exhaled a juddering sigh that vibrated through her whole body and made him hard in about three seconds. “We should talk,” he muttered.

“Talk later,” she said while he was still kissing her. 

“Your husband?” he breathed.

“No husband. Only you.”

They didn’t seem to be capable of unlocking from each other. He led her to the parking lot and opened the car door for her but then he had to get her suitcase into the trunk and she wouldn’t let go of him. “Thirty seconds Betts.” She groaned as he stepped away from her like it was causing her pain. He threw the case into the car and jogged round to the driver’s side. As he slid into the seat she was tugging his tank top untucked and her hand was on his stomach. “Betts we have to talk.”

“No. Take me to your house. I need you. Please Juggie.” She was looking at him with such desperation that he felt like she was drowning and he was her rescuer. But he couldn’t save her if he was dragged under by her need. 

“I need you too. But if we do this and you leave it’ll break me. If it happens the discussion has to be how we make it work not if we can make it work. Otherwise you have to let me be.”

“Yes. That’s what I want. We’ll make it work somehow.”

The drive was torture. She kept touching his arm as if she was checking he was solid flesh. He wasn’t sure himself. “I had a whole speech planned Jug. Then I saw you and I forgot everything. Is it far?”

“Not far, not too far. Almost there.” He was muttering to himself as much as to her. He really needed to calm down or there was going to be a terrible anticlimax in store for her. She had flown six hours for this; he’d better make it worth the trip.

Finally they arrived and he pulled into the garage. She smiled to see the motorcycle as he parked beside it. They abandoned her bag in the trunk. He remembered he was the host and asked if she wanted food or a drink. “Where’s your bed?” she replied. Thank god for new sheets.

_______________________________

She knew that she was being disgustingly needy and clinging and demanding but she also wasn’t capable of stopping. She’d been propelled into his arms by a force that she had submitted herself to completely. Then he kissed her and it seemed to her that there was a magical potion on his lips that entered her body as they kissed. It was on her lips, tingling and fizzing, in her throat causing a knot that made it hard to catch her breath, in her shoulders it was relaxing a tension that had been there so long that she hadn’t noticed it until it was gone. Her body was relaxed and pliant under its power. Then it was moving to her breasts, making them ache to be pressed against him. She moved closer moaning with the need. The sensation moved to her hips, her belly, spasming and contracting her muscles. There was a gnawing hunger inside her; the kiss had awakened it and only the philtre on his lips could assuage it. He was saying something about her husband that made no sense but she had just enough wit to tell him that there was no such person. As she said it she realised that even though she hadn’t seen him for ten years he had always been her husband. That was why she hadn’t been able to marry Adam, why she held herself apart emotionally from other men. She tried to tell him but all she could muster was “Only you.”

They were in his home. She would have liked to look at it, take the tour, but all she could focus on right now was him, being with him. She let him lead her to his bedroom and waited impatiently while he opened French doors and drew the drapes across the window. There was a breeze and they billowed into the room. She unbuttoned the few fastened buttons of his shirt and threw it off him. She pulled his undershirt off over his head and sighed. It was still him, more muscular, tanned but still unmistakably, unforgettably his long slim torso. He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. They still understood each other and she dragged her cotton top over her head and reached around to unfasten her bra. “Oh no no no. That’s my job.” He reached behind her with and unhooked it one handed.

She gasped. “Too smooth.” 

“Oh honey. You have no idea,” he smiled.

He’d been a boy when they were together, struggling to last, reciting the periodic table or the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner under his breath, trying so hard to find out what would make it good for her that he was never entirely and completely present. It had been great because she loved him but he hadn’t been any more skilful than she imagined other nineteen year old boys were. He was different now, more in the moment with her. She reached for his belt buckle, her fingers shaking now she was so close to him. He brushed her hand aside, unbuckled and pulled the belt from the loops with a sweeping gesture that made her groan. He found the drawstring that fastened her skirt and undid it with a tug that let the soft fabric pool at her feet. She stepped out of it and shrugged her unfastened bra onto the heap. He was staring at her and she felt embarrassed. Her body was softer now, more rounded that when he’d last looked at her. She put an arm across herself and started to turn sideways but he put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “You’re so much more beautiful. I see what your body was promising to become. Don’t hide from me. I couldn’t want you more.” He dropped his head to kiss and suck at the junction of her neck and shoulder, drawing his fingers along the back of her arm in a way that he must have remembered made her quiver.

She unbuttoned his jeans and he toed off his boots at the same time and, hopping in a way that she had forgotten that he did, he extricated himself from them. Her mouth was dry, her heart racing. “What do you want Betts?” he murmured between open mouthed kisses. 

“Everything. All at once. Appetiser, entree, all the sides, desert. Bring it all at once on a huge tray and I’ll climb onto the table and roll in it all.” She grinned at him but it was true. She was starved of him and it was just impossible to prioritise.

“Ah, madam wants the service à la française. A discerning choice. Lie back. Your order is at the pass.” 

“Oh my God Jug, when did all this sophistication happen?”

He grinned. “I once ordered the steak tartare well done. Once you’ve done that you make it a priority to learn fast. Now I think I told you to lie back.”

He’d always been an alpha male in the bedroom, had a take charge attitude. She’d looked for that in lovers afterwards. Adam was always submissive, meek even, and it put all of the responsibility onto her. If one of them didn’t achieve their climax it felt like she had failed and it made her anxious. So anxious that sometimes, to her shame, she faked it. She’d never faked with Jug. She’d just say “Sorry Juggie, it’s not happening,” and he’d hold her and stroke her hair and tell her that he loved her until they fell asleep. Now he was gently but decisively pushing her back onto the bed, his big hands over her breasts, massaging her as he bit gently at her neck. “Oh Juggie, it was always you. Always you. I was such an idiot. I’m so sorry.”

“No, we couldn’t know. We were children. We couldn’t know what we had until we’d seen the world a little. I’ve never wanted anyone like I wanted you. Lightning in a bottle. Let’s never let it go again. I want to go down on you. Is that OK?”

“Since you want to I’ll allow it,” she giggled. He kissed her breasts, licked a long line down her torso. He didn’t rush. He’d told her his plan so every second that he delayed was a delicious torture. It would have been unbelievably arousing to have his tongue on her in any circumstance but to know that it was going to happen, to wait for it was an exercise in Hitchcockian suspense. He slid her underwear down her legs, and then his hands were on her hips, holding her in place, his hair brushed down her belly making her gasp, the flat of his hand between her legs and she was moaning, writhing against his grip. His tongue licking, his lips against her, his fingers on her. She heard herself, a long way away, crying out, “Yes, oh please, oh fuck Jug, I love you.”

There was a tiny voice that said that she mustn’t tell this man that she loved him, that it was too much, that she’d scare him but then she heard his voice. “I love you. You’re mine forever now. You can’t ever leave.” Then his mouth on her again, his tongue moving inside her and his fingers rubbing against her and she was crying out, wailing, out of control and he was gasping with the fury of it, hooking her thighs over his shoulders to go deeper, be more united with her. She juddered over and over until she began to fear that it would never end, that this would be the way she would live now but he stroked her and murmured into her thigh, “It’s OK Betty. I’ve got you baby. Shhh, it’s OK,” and she began to come down. He shimmied up the bed, his hair tangled and wild from her fingers gripping at it, his eyes shining in triumph. “Was that nice?”

“Oh you are far too smug Mr Jones,” she panted and reached down to take him in her hand. He sighed deeply. 

“I never thought I’d have this again. Fuck it feels so good.” She remembered the speed and pressure he liked and he had his eyes closed, his mouth a little open as he exhaled but she knew that some guys didn’t appreciate an inferior version of what they could do for themselves. “Is this OK? Tell me what you want.” 

“So good. I’m, oh fuck, I’m not on quite such a hair trigger these days. Time to enjoy it.” She made swift work of relieving him of his boxers and swung a leg across him and kissed his shoulders, his chest, the spot on his hip where he was most ticklish, making him flinch deliciously. She teased him a little, kissing his thighs, running her tongue across his belly. Then she used her mouth as well as her hand, taking him deep in a way she’d never dared when they were young, confident in her knowledge of what she could do. He began to groan, low and deep. “Betts, about that hair trigger…”

She paused and sat back to look at him, sweeping her hair back over her shoulder. “It’s OK, there’s time for another round. I’m not planning to get out of your bed until you call the cops to get rid of me.”

“Never going to happen. Get back to your work woman.” His hands were on her breasts, squeezing a nipple and making her tremble and she enjoyed the sensation for a moment before returning to her ministrations. She listened to his breathing, his moans, judging her speed to keep him just at the brink, loving the power she was able to wield but then he seemed to lose his grip. He brought a hand to her head and just as quickly moved it to grab the sheets. “Betts, I’m so close. Betts.” Betty had always pulled off him and worked him with her hand before but she didn’t want to do that now. She wanted to finish the job. He tried to pull away but she held his hips, digging her fingernails lightly into his flesh as he came. “Betts, I tried to tell you. I… Oh you’re a demon.” She grinned at him and kissed his chest before curling up against him and resting her head on his stomach.

______________________

He was running his fingers through her hair. It was as soft as it had always been. He moved it gently it across his chest and then stroked it back onto her shoulder. “I thought you might have cut it. I’m glad you didn’t.” 

She spoke against his chest, “I’m glad too now. My heartbeat seems to slow down when you do that. Should we talk now?”

“I guess so. I can think for a minute. Recovery’s a bit slower when you’re almost thirty. I guess I should say I’m sorry about your marriage but I’m not. How long have you been divorced or, oh Christ, he didn’t die did he?”

“He didn’t die and he was never my husband. I called it off. I couldn’t marry him when I loved you. It wasn’t fair to him.” He sat up abruptly.

“Why didn’t you call me then? If you loved me? What the fuck Betts?”

“I was waiting for you but you didn’t come. I thought that you’d moved on, with your career and the book and the TV show. I thought you didn’t want me.”

“Well it would have been nice to be fucking well asked. You broke up with me Betty. All through college, all through grad school I waited and waited. If you’d texted me to come I would have been there right away but not a fucking word. Nada.” He was mad now. How could a smart woman be so dumb?

“But you didn’t call me either Jug. I’d hurt you. I couldn’t just call you back to me when it suited. And you moved to the other side of the country without a word. What was I supposed to think?” She sat up, dragging the sheet across her body, getting armoured for a fight he guessed. “Do you want me to go?”

That was it. That was always her go to resolution. We could break up. He was really mad now. “Oh yeah, that’s the Betty Cooper way isn’t it? Did it get tough for a second? Bail then. End it, break everyone’s fucking heart, burn the whole thing down and walk away from the ruins. Fuck Betty, it’s been ten years. You break my heart, you really do.”

“Oh Christ Jug, don’t be so dramatic. You didn’t die. Look around. You’re doing pretty fucking well for yourself. Do you think you would have had any of this if you’d just trailed behind me to Yale? The career, the awards, the book, the money, a goddamn swimming pool.”

“Oh right, I’m supposed to thank you am I?” Now he was unleashing the sarcasm. “Thank you Betty for all the wonderful things that you give me. The sleepless nights, the misery, the constant sense of total fucking inadequacy. You’ve always thought I should be grateful haven’t you, your trailer trash boyfriend, happy with the crumbs that fall from the Northside table. Fuck you Betts. I’m not grateful. You almost broke me.”

She put her hand on his arm and he looked into her eyes. She looked scared but determined. “Wait. Wait Jug. Fuck we’re doing this all wrong. OK. Press pause. Have you got any food in this mansion?”

“There’s food. I’m not a savage.” He was starting to sulk.

“Ok, let’s get some food, something to drink. We’re going to work this out.”

He could tell that she was impressed that there was fresh fruit as well as pastries and about twelve types of coffee and they worked together in silence to assemble a meal. Then she explained the plan. “I've had some therapy. Let's try this out. It was pretty helpful with my mom. Right so we set a timer on my phone for a minute. You tell me everything you want to say. Tell me about how you feel, what happened when we were apart, anything. I just listen. I’m not allowed to speak until the timer ends. Not even if you run out of things to say. Then we swap and I talk and you listen. And we do that for six minutes in total.” He nodded in assent, feeling a little sceptical. She set the timer.

He told her about grad school and about Rosie. He told her about how he thought she’d get in touch, about learning that she was going to be married, about the feeling that she preferred someone else. She kept silent but the tears were falling. He told her that he had loved her since he was in kindergarten and that he just didn’t know how to stop even if it would have made his life easier. He told her that he wanted to be with her but that he had three years in contract in LA and he was concerned about the distance because it had broken them before. He told her he was mad with her because she hadn’t fought for them, for him.

Then it was her turn and he listened intently as she told him that she loved him, that she would do whatever it took to be with him. If she had to move to LA and run the magazine from there then fine. Or they could be bicoastal, hiatuses in NYC and show seasons in LA. Or if it meant they were together then she’d move to Karachi or Anchorage. Whatever. She was sorry that she hadn’t tried harder before but she’d thought that what they had couldn’t be broken. She told him about Adam, that he was a good man, but that Jug had the “touch of earth” that she needed. He raised an eyebrow at the quote. “It’s Tennyson. My therapist says I use literary references to offload my feelings. I mean that Adam was too wholesome. You have an edge. A little shadow. “The low sun makes the colour.” Fuck, I did it again.” They only made it through two minutes each before they abandoned the system because they found the key. 

“I don’t know how to deal with things being messy Juggie. It’s a problem I have. If something isn’t perfect then I just assume it’s worthless. It’s dumb. I know it’s wrong. I guess I was brought up to make everything neat and right and if I failed then I wasn’t worth loving. I always focus on what’s bad not what’s good and it made me lose the best thing I ever had. I’m so sorry.” Jug thought that just maybe her therapy bills had been money well spent.

Suddenly it made sense to him. Alice Cooper in her immaculate home, passing the pancakes at breakfast and missing out Betty, sliding the fruit in front of her instead. What a piece of work. The insight calmed him down. “No it’s not only you. I should have tried harder. I just felt rejected and I knew that feeling pretty well. You know why.”

“Oh my God, I did just what your mom did. Oh Jug I’m so sorry. And that’s why you couldn’t…You thought I’d just reject you again. I can’t believe I was so dumb.”

“We’re both dumb and damaged and smart enough to learn and do better, aren’t we? Hey we had our first fight. And Betty, I don’t want you to leave. I never ever want you to leave. I want you, however hard it gets, to stay with me and work shit out. Time for make up sex?”

_________________________

There was more of the elixir of their kissing, a mouth at a neck, a hand winding into hair. Someone’s lips around a nipple sucking and then grazing lightly with teeth. The sounds of breath sucked in sharply, the groaning exhalation of pleasure. A hand exploring soft wetness, a mouth around silky hardness. There was a whisper of a question, a sigh of assent, a sliding ecstasy of relief. Gentle strokes gave way to deep long thrusts, murmuring endearments, gentle caresses alternating with fingernails scraping flesh, skin held between teeth and sucked hard enough to leave a bruise, strong fingertips gripping, curses, moans, a cry that was part rapture, part triumph, part joy. Someone was weeping with the power of their feeling, neither of them really knew which of them it was, so entangled were their senses. Into the darkness she whispered “O love, O fire! once he drew with one long kiss my whole soul through my lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.”

“Tennyson?”

“Yup.”

_______________________________


End file.
